Chapter 11: Walking the Tightrope
The child who died last night came back as a ghost and is now with his classmates in a different form.
Lu Jiamu originally wanted to close his eyes and pretend that he didn't know it came in, but he soon discovered that the ghost seemed a little stupid.
It kept mumbling "I want cake" to itself, but did not try to talk to any children. Its behavior was completely different from the previous female ghost.
Lu Jiamu recalled the description of the first-level ghosts: they had no intelligence, barely noticed living people, were unable to harm humans, or could be defeated by ordinary tools of ordinary people.
Their existence seems to have no meaning except wandering around.
Lu Jiamu turned his head and squinted to take a look.
The grayish-white thing seemed to be swollen and dripping with water, leaving stains all over the way.
It stumbled to the small bed where it had lived before its death, sat down awkwardly, and stared blankly into space: "I want to eat... cake..."
I don’t know if its mumbling rap would make the children next to it uncomfortable, but Lu Jiamu was already starting to feel the noise.
Before, Lu Jiamu didn’t know that people killed by ghosts would turn into ghosts.
Now it seems that not only will it change, but there will also be a decreasing trend in IQ. This child not only seems to be unaware of the presence of someone next to him, but he may not even know that he is dead, and is returning to the dormitory according to his previous habits.
I missed a whole day of classes, but you didn’t notice anything was wrong?
Lu Jiamu couldn't understand it, but seeing how stupid it was, he decided to be more careful next time. He didn't want to become like this.
Seeing that it had been rapping for a long time without any success and looked like it was going to sit there all night, Lu Jiamu moved, turned over and started counting sheep. After counting hundreds of times, it fell asleep to the rhythmic sound of "I want to eat cake".
The night was peaceful.
Lu Jiamu woke up several times during the night. When he vaguely felt that it was almost dawn, he suddenly heard a hoarse voice shouting in his ear: "Students, get up!"
It was Teacher Gao’s voice.
Lu Jiamu was woken up, but did not open his eyes immediately.
He was about to sit up and fold the quilt, but he laughed in his heart: No...
When Teacher Gao came in, he would bang on the door first. It would be impossible for him to do it so silently.
And if he came, the group of children in the room would jump up immediately. But now, there was silence.
Lu Jiamu listened carefully and vaguely heard a "tick-tick" sound of dripping water.
It's a ghost.
It’s amazing, my voice actually changed after eating a person.
Lu Jiamu turned over and pretended that he was still asleep.
The hoarse voice shouted again: "Why don't you get up?!"
If the previous sentence makes some sense, then this sentence is too fake.
The child next to him made no move to get up. If Teacher Gao were here, he would not have spoken to him alone like this.
Lu Jiamu ignored it, and it didn't stick around like it did yesterday. After shouting a few more times and seeing that he wasn't fooled, it quickly left.
Lu Jiamu heard a series of whispering sounds coming from the side.
Because its skills had improved today, it had not been wandering around the house for long when Lu Jiamu felt that a child in the same row was very afraid of Teacher Gao. He was awakened by the voice while half asleep and half awake, and immediately sat up, shaking the entire row of beds.
Then there was a short scream, and halfway through the scream it was as if someone was strangled by the neck, and the breath was blocked.
Soon he regained his composure and began to mumble in his sleep: "I don't want to... go to class... I don't want to... go to class..."
The child seemed to be bewitched. He got off the bed, stumbled after something, walked out of the dormitory slowly step by step, and closed the door behind him.
This scene is exactly the same as last night.
Lu Jiamu knew that this child would also come back as a ghost tomorrow.
The female ghost succeeded again today, and I don’t know if she will have the ability to start a group chat mode tomorrow.
After a while, Lu Jiamu heard Yu Leng's voice gasping for air beside him: "Incredible, incredible..."
Today, the ghost learned to change its voice. Lu Jiamu couldn't tell whether it was Yu Leng's real voice just by hearing it, nor could he tell by the presence or absence of dripping water.
After all, it seems that its intelligence has increased today, and who knows, it might have some other little tricks up its sleeve.
So Lu Jiamu did not respond.
Yu Leng's voice added: "You must tell the teacher about this tomorrow."
Wang Biao obviously thought the same as Lu Jiamu and did not respond to Yu Leng's words.
After not getting a response, he stopped talking.
This time the ghost stayed in the dormitory for a shorter time and did not wake up all the students.
When they were either still asleep or woken up by the noise and waited until nearly six o'clock, Teacher Gao came again a few minutes early and banged on the door. Seeing that the door was not locked, he pushed it open and shouted into the loudspeaker: "Get up, get up!"
Lu Jiamu calculated that the time was almost up, so he sat up and began to fold the quilt.
But there were still many trembling children in the house who did not dare to get up, fearing that the female ghost had come again.
Teacher Gao frowned: "Why is it so slow today?!"
He walked in with his eyes wide open and quickly walked around the dormitory, urging the children who were still lying down to get up while counting the number of people.
Although Teacher Gao is also very scary, he is far inferior to the female ghost.
Soon he discovered that another child was missing.
Teacher Gao pointed to the empty bed and asked, "Where's the person?"
The child next to him hesitated for a while before answering: "He...followed the ghost out..."
Teacher Gao's face turned even darker with anger, and the black blood vessels under his skin were throbbing wildly: "How come another one went out! Didn't I tell you yesterday not to respond to noises at night?"
"But...but it disguised itself as your voice..."
Teacher Gao was silent for a moment.
"It has intelligence, can you at least tell it apart? Would I come to you in the middle of the night for no reason? How can you be dumber than a ghost?" Teacher Gao said, "Pack up quickly, line up and come out."
The group of children were sure that this was the real Teacher Gao, so they stopped pretending to sleep, quickly folded their bedding, put on their clothes, lined up, and followed Teacher Gao out of the dormitory.
They had breakfast like they did yesterday, and Teacher Gao went to talk to Teacher Wen again.
But maybe because he had given them a warning yesterday, or maybe he thought the ghost was too cunning, in any case, Teacher Wen just made a brief comment on the matter before the morning math reading, and did not drag them to look at the corpse.
After Lu Jiamu spent another day in front of the simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division on the blackboard during morning math reading, the two teachers took them to the playground again.
He also announced that since they did not finish the run yesterday and knew that the task was beyond the scope, he decided to halve the endurance training today and use the remaining time to train their balance ability.
Everyone was naturally happy that they didn't have to run for so long.
Moreover, Yu Leng felt that balance ability was something that was mostly innate, and it was strongest when one was a child, so it shouldn't be very difficult to train.
As he was thinking this, he ran back and saw two teachers using equipment to set up a long rope more than two meters high.
Teacher Wen was still explaining to them: "Developing excellent balance and landing skills will be of great help to your future outdoor exploration missions. Outside of school, you will always encounter roads that are not roads."
Excellent landing skills? Actually, it’s just about practicing how to survive a fall.
Yu Leng took a look and suddenly realized: ... walking on a tightrope?
So this school is really training circus performers?
The children in a class ran back breathlessly, but did not show much surprise when they saw the long rope, as if they had long been accustomed to this arrangement by the teachers.
They lined up quietly beside the ladder and watched the first child climb up the ladder, take the long stick handed by the teacher, turn it sideways and walk shakily onto the long rope, and soon fall down to the ground.
Lu Jiamu touched his chin and stared at the rope. He felt that this circus... no, school, was becoming more and more interesting.
His number was the first among the six people, and he was always the first to try anything strange.
After the twenty-one children in front of him finished their practice, Yu Leng patted him, as if to encourage him and himself: "Keep going."
Lu Jiamu nodded, climbed up the ladder expressionlessly, turned the long balance bar in his hand, and grasped it in the middle.
Fear of heights is human instinct, but Lu Jiamu lacked this emotion. When he looked down, he did not feel any ups and downs in his heart. He just knew rationally that he had to maintain stability and avoid falling.
He took the first step forward, climbed onto the rope, swayed left and right, and quickly found his balance with the help of the long pole.
Lu Jiamu paused for a moment and then started walking on the rope.
Balance is like learning to ride a bike for the first time. The more nervous you are and the more you don’t want to fall, the more likely you are to fall. But when you really relax, you can stay steady.
Lu Jiamu stared at his feet to keep his balance, and walked forward without any psychological burden, as relaxed as if he was just walking along an ordinary straight line on the ground.
Except this line will swing back and forth.
But this just adds to the challenge and fun.
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